I got a couple of games of S&S in over the last few weeks, the first a 351 points HYW noobfest playing Anthony at the old club, the second a 500 point English vs Mongols noobfest against Dan. I took on the role of the English in both games, against Anthony’s “French” (really half of my English HYW army) and against Dan’s Golden Horde. 351 point games have been lasting us about 2 hours, so I wanted to see how a 500 point game would go too – in the end, it took about 2 to 2 1/2 hours to play too, so shouldn’t take that much longer to play. The first game was an interesting one – so far I hadn’t won a single game of S&S, and the English had always won the previous match-ups, so something had to give there. Spoiler alert – I continued my losing streak. The astute of those reading this blog will realise from the title of this post that I won the second game (about time too).
This post is mostly going to be a picture-a-thon, with the odd comment here and there, mostly because the first game was played several weeks ago now and I can’t remember much of it.
Here’s the opening positions of the first game:
I forgot to take any pictures of the first few moves, so we join out battle in media res, the French knights steaming down my flank, crossbowmen and artillery eyeing my longbowmen, and my heavy foot in the centre with more longbowmen on my right flank. Anthony had a camp, I didn’t (when I’ve been playing against a noob, I’ve tended to give away little advantages like that to try to even things up since I know the rules better, which only partially accounts for my losses to date – and in this case, those little advantages had absolutely no bearing in the game – I was trounced!).
You can see my heavy foot in the centre make a break for it – across from them were relatively poorer foot on the French side, so I thought I might as well give it a go there and be aggressive for a change (the English army is a very defensive one, what with the stakes and all).
There goes my first unit (longbowmen at the end of the line). Uh oh.
Just managed to turn my longbowmen round to protect the flank as the French charge in. Still, not looking too good. The initial charge is dampened by the stakes, but after that, the knights have a clear advantage.
In the centre, we’d finally managed to get our heavy foot into action, along with some dastardly French knights charging into my flank. I was only facing brigans to my front though, who shouldn’t take too long to deal with. Unless you keep rolling poorly, of course.
Eventually I did deal with them though. Having a captain with the troops really helps matters too.
But on my left flank, another unit of longbow disappears under the onslaught of the French knights. Things aren’t looking great for the English…
And as expected, the longbow on my left disintegrate, allowing the French knights to charge into the rear of the English foot. Sandwiched, they don’t have much of a chance, though they did last quite a few turns thanks to their heavy armour and captain. Eventually though, they fell, and with them, I lost the game, a thorough defeat (I think I killed 1 or at most 2 French units, and lost about 5 myself). Still, it was great fun, as always. :)
And so, onto the second game.
My English managed to use the sparse terrain to their advantage this time, anchoring themselves with a forest to their left flank which hid the camp, guarded by Welsh Spear. From left to right, I had artillery, longbowmen, dismounted knights, longbowmen, dismounted knights up on the hill, longbowmen on the hill next to them, then billmen, two more longbowmen, and hiding at the back there ready to disappear up the flank, my mounted Gascons. Facing me, Dan had three light horse, three armoured cavalry, and three more light horse, with his camp behind the centre.
My position was a pretty good one, and I’d learned from previous games that mixing longbow and heavy foot meant that I’d have a decent enough advantage in melee, since units in Sword and Spear never line up exactly. If I kept to my lines, anyone charging the longbow would also be charging the heavy foot next to them, which should give me an advantage. All of my longbowmen had stakes, which really takes the edge off the charge (enemy units can’t count impetus), though in the second turn, the cavalry have the advantage. By interweaving heavy foot amongst my longbowmen, I could activate them to fight, with their own advantages (heavy armour, strength 4), and hopefully the longbowmen would at least be able to score a hit on the enemy cavalry to rid them of their fresh cavalry bonus die.
The Mongol centre and their left flank (my right). Three Light Horse on the flank, with 3 Armoured Cavalry in the centre. Every stand of Dan’s army had bows, but they have a shorter range than my longbowmen.
On Dan’s other flank, more Light Horse. These are illegally deployed (you have to leave a few DUs to the side free from deployment. That’s why in later photos they’ve suddenly shifted toward the centre more (it took us a turn or so to realise).
The English left flank, the camp and Welsh Spear guarding it, the artillery ready to destroy anything that comes within range, and the longbowmen fortified by dismounted knights ready to repel chargers while blotting out the sun with their arrows.
The English centre, dismounted knights and longbowmen on the rocky hill, billmen and longbowmen on the flank, and my Gascon knights starting to make their slow move onto the flank.
And we’re off! Dan started an approach from his right, which slowly spread along the line. I took advantage of some decent dice to fire the guns at him as he approached, but thanks to some poor rolling (I had several bonus dice, but still no good), the cannonballs passed between the horses. Damn the Mongols and their small pony targets!
The nice thing about this match up is that the Mongols can’t do their usual trick of staying within bow range and evading, since my missile troops had greater range than they did. Which meant they had to come nice and close…
After a couple of turns, I managed to get my flank longbowmen into position (though without their stakes being deployed yet. Ulp). My Gascons were ready to move up that flank too. They’re undrilled, which means manoeuvres are difficult for them. If you can point them in a direction though, they’ll eventually steamroller their way there. Slowly. Heavy armour slows you down, especially against enemy who move faster than you anyway.
Here come the Mongols in the centre! The first few rounds of fire between us were in my favour, since the Mongols were moving and firing (so only had 2 dice for shooting), whereas mine had 3 dice.
Of course, the problem with Dan’s Light Horse moving into range is that they can also charge my artillery, who don’t do well in melee. As can be seen by their absence from the field.
Having said that, longbowmen are superior to Light Horse when it comes to shooting, as can be seen by one of the enemy units melting away. I don’t like the look of that Light Horse on y flank though.
Here come the Mongols! All along the line, the mongols came forward and started to pepper my ranks with arrows too. The ones in the centre are strength 3, which means when stationary, they roll 3 dice in shooting just like my longbowmen, so we’re on an even basis. Dan kept rolling doubles and 6s though, so at least half the time his cavalry were using 4 dice. Luck, in that he didn’t tend to roll that great, coupled with half his targets being heavy armour troops, meant that I wasn’t too worried though.
Uh oh. That Light Horse on my flank that did away with my artillery manoeuvered around a bit, enabling them to take potshots at my longbowmen at the end of the line. I could do the same with my longbow, manoeuvering them around to face them and return fire, but that would mean leaving my stakes, which I was loathe to do, especially with cavalry nearby ready to charge them. To counter that from happening, my dismounted knights charged forward to block the cavalry (and head for the Light Horse to their front). And by charged I mean move 1 DU forward per turn.
The view from the Longbowmen’s vantage. See those dismounted knights go haring off!
The view from the hill. Come on Mongols, try charging up the hill! Dare you!
Ha! Thanks to it being near the end of a turn, the Light Horse had been activated already and so couldn’t evade, and my dismounted knights managed to get a whopping 4 dice for activation. It only took two extra dice for them to get into melee, which meant my strength 4, heavy armoured knights were throwing 7 dice against the Light Horse’s 3! Prepare to die, Light Horse! Except I rolled terribly and didn’t do a single hit to them at all. Still, it was worth it to see the dismounted knights go at three times their usual pace.
Score one for the longbowmen! This one was great. I rolled something like 3, 2, 1 and 1, but in reply Dan rolled three 1s. The two auto hits were enough to kill the unit. Yay!
And here come the Gascons! Having finally got into a position where they could do something, they charged and caught the Light Horse napping (already activated so couldn’t evade). RAWR! They then pursued, putting them about 6 turns away from being able to be useful again.
Things were looking dicey for my dismounted knights though. The Light Horse weren’t much of a problem – they were only throwing 3 dice when they fought against me (2 for strength, 1 for having friends involved, with an occasional bonus die too), since my foot had 4 dice, usually plus at least one bonus die for activation / impetus, and heavy armour. The Mongol cavalry also in contact, however, were strength 3, had an extra die for friends, usually at least one activation / impetus die, and were fresh for another die – often throwing 6-7 dice. As these things go though, the opposite result occurred – the Light horse rolled well while I didn’t, and the Cavalry rolled poorly while I did. End result – bye bye armoured cavalry.
And the Welsh claim victory! Again some luck for me, my Welsh managed to get some good bonus dice, so after moving forward into charge range, they unleashed their fury on the Light Horse to their front. Again, choosing their moment well, they attacked when the Light Horse couldn’t evade, and their bonus dice were put to good use in the melee too, rolling 4 or 5 dice against the Light Horse’s 2 dice. And with their loss, the Mongol army’s morale crumbled, and the rest of his forces turned and fled. At last! A victory!
